Outsourcing the brains: The epistemic power of consultancies in criminal justice

• In Event: Digital Criminology: Criminal Justice and Knowledge Production

Abstract

The growing use of consultants in the public sector has been described as ‘consultocracy’ (Hood and Jackson, 1991) and denotes a process whereby the tasks of running the state are outsourced to consultants, thus replacing internal expertise and political debate about public issues. However, the role and influence of consultancies is, so far, empirically unexamined within criminal justice scholarship. Drawing on document analysis of calls for tenders and interviews with consultants working within the criminal justice field in Norway, the paper examines the knowledge products delivered by consultants, as well as the processes of contracting, producing and using these products and services. We argue that, particularly due to the so-called digital shift, consultants increasingly shape the organizational infrastructure of criminal justice, its modes of thinking and communication, in addition to its evidence base and the transmission and production of knowledge. Consultants are active agents in the proliferation of influential ideas and practices and are in central ways shaping how criminal justice agencies understand not only the social problems they deal with and the responses to them, but also their role and function in society.

Authors

• Katja Franko, University of Oslo

• Heidi Mork Lomell, University of Oslo